Social Care Wales Workforce Development Programme (SCWWDP)

The Social Care Wales Workforce Development Grant (SCWWDP) is a long-established grant programme to support training and workforce development across social care in Wales. The annual grant from Social Care Wales, which is match funded by local authorities, is distributed regionally and is used by local authorities to support training and workforce development activity in both their own organisations and for providers in the independent and voluntary sector.

The SCWWDP also includes the Regional Facilitation Grant. This funding doesn’t need to be matched funded by local authorities but must be used on specific priorities.

Social Care Wales administers and manages the grant. We issue the requirements of the grant to regions each year through the ‘grant circular’. The grant circular is approved by our Board, and includes information about:

• the amount of the grant

• what it can be used for that year

• how to apply for the money

• how the grant should be managed

• what our expectations are for reporting and monitoring.

As part of our requirements for receiving the SCWWDP grant, regions must report on how they’ve invested the SCWWDP funds. This includes the money we’ve issued and the 30 per cent match funding contributed by each local authority. This information forms the national themes and findings report annually.

Each region is audited every year by Audit Wales to make sure all the public money invested in SCWWDP is accounted for.

Subject to confirmation of funding the SCWWDP grant administered by Social Care Wales is around £7.6 million every year.

Local authorities are required to provide match funding for SCWWDP, the same as 30 per cent of the funding provided by Social Care Wales, which is around £3.3 million every year. However, some local authorities do spend over and above the 30 per cent match funding.

Overall, total spend on SCWWDP is around £10.9 million every year.

The priorities of the SCWWDP grant are aligned to selected themes in A Healthier Wales: Our Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care. We developed and published the joint workforce strategy with Health Education and Improvement Wales in October 2020.

SCWWDP can't fully fund the entire ambition of the workforce strategy, and to make sure the current funding is used proportionately, the grant focuses on the following key areas for workforce development: 

• Building a digitally ready workforce  

• Excellent education and learning   

• Leadership and succession   

• Workforce shape and supply   

• Provision of qualifying and post qualifying social work training (This is a priority of the social work workforce plan) 

The Regional Facilitation Grant element of the SCWWDP can only be used for the following priorities:

• supporting sector wide engagement within the regions

• contributing to the delivery of the registered managers forums within the regions

• contributing to the regional care career connector function to support attraction, recruitment and retention campaigns aligned to the WeCare Wales programme of work

• contributing to the increase in the number of sponsored social work students hosted by each local authority.

In 2025 to 2026 we will be working on the following with our partners:

• building a fuller picture of social care workforce development across Wales

• monitoring the risk of higher investment in social work

• strengthening grant guidance

• ensuring that training take-up and attendance reflects the sector profile

• measuring impact.